On Feb 16, 8:57*pm, aemeijers wrote:
Jack wrote:
On Feb 16, 5:40 pm, wrote:
I am planning to buy a house. Hill country, Austin TX. The house was
built in 1978, 3BR, 1800 sq feet, 2 stories. The soil is rather
"rocky" there. As I saw a couple of diagonal crack coming from the
windows I contracted a foundation inspector to check up the slab
underneath the house. He came over and took measurements (he used some
powered device with an antenna). The outcome of the measurements is in
the attached link. Do you think that 1.5" difference within 40 feet is
in tolerance ? He recommended that no foundation repair is needed. I
am a little concerned though so I seek a second opinion. Pls let me
know - thanks so much
Martin

http://www.newhouse.com-a.googlepage...Untitled-1.jpg

Not a foundation expert, but doesn't sound critical to me. My main
concern with a slab foundation is they are prone for termite invasion.
Crack usualy will open beneath a wall unseen and termites can enter
and do extensive damage before you realize they are around. For that
reason I would never be sucker enough to buy a slab house. I lived in
Florida for 40 years and in my subdivision every house with a slab
floor had a termite problem. Those with crawl spaced were spared. Good
luck.

Only way I would ever build with a crawlspace was if it had a concrete
floor and was tall enough to stand up in. I hate working in
crawlspaces, hated it even when I was young and skinny. My other house
down in Louisiana is on a slab, and yeah, it is a pain, too, but nothing
like the houses on piers (open crawlspaces, basically) are. This place
has basement under the original house, and a (thankfully deep) crawl
under the addition, but they used a backwards-mounted standard basement
window for the outside access, so getting my fat gut in there is a MAJOR
chore.

'Ground is too hard' is nonsense- only valid excuse for not having a
basement, IMHO, is the water table being too high. If the lot consists
of 2 feet of dirt on top of rock ledge, build up the lot. If that isn't
an option, build elsewhere. If you simply MUST build on an undiggable
lot, build the first floor out of concrete.

aem sends...- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

well...I will invite you to hill country in Austin,TX then...if you
find a house with a basement I buy you dinner ..I asked around many
times ...why no crawl/basement...always the same answer .. it is going
to be too expensive to dig that extra 3 to 7 feet ...same story with
pools .. if you want to have a pool, buy a house with a pool ..never
built one urself ..as it is going to be a waste. project cost 10K,
value added maybe 4-5K